


The Fillyjonk Who Craved Disaster

by clefairytea



Category: Moominvalley (Cartoon 2019), Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson
Genre: F/F, Older Characters, Slow Burn, Trans!Misabel, Yes I am doing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 07:37:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20738609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clefairytea/pseuds/clefairytea
Summary: It was terrifying. Here it was, finally, the disaster she’d so believed in. Mrs Fillyjonk wanted to bolt back up the stairs, locking the door and the disaster behind her.She perhaps would have, if she were not a little thrilled as well.At the foot of the stairs, there were something sneaking on top of the trashcans. Barely able to breathe, Mrs Fillyjonk swung around to shine her lamp on it.“Ah!”The disaster collapsed, bringing the bins down with it in a cacophony of metal clanging. The disaster had fallen in, head-first, and was rolling around on the floor with her short legs kicking desperately.“Misabel?” Mrs Fillyjonk gasped.“Madame?” came Misabel’s muffled reply. She sat up, the trash can still lodged on her head.What a disappointment! Finally, a real disaster, and it was just little Misabel rummaging through her bins!--Mrs Fillyjonk and Misabel live together for a while.





	The Fillyjonk Who Craved Disaster

**Author's Note:**

> Hey Gutsy Animation, I've got a wild-ass pitch for you on how to adapt the Fillyjonk Who Believed in Disaster.
> 
> Absolutely nobody on this earth asked for this but I wrote it anyway! Because at the very least I'm invested in this, and I'd like more stories about older LGBT people.
> 
> Technically a prequel to my other fic, Moominland in the Mirror, I _guess_, but you don't remotely need to read that to have fun with this. 
> 
> Content warnings for cartoonish discussions of anxiety and depression, as well as discussions of estranged family and controlling parenting.

On an autumn day, Mrs Fillyjonk was carefully and systematically cleaning every last corner of her careful and systematic home. The leaves had long ago turned gold and red, and by now most branches were bare. Soon, snow would settle into Moominvalley. The more bohemian denizens would settle into hibernation or begin migration, while more sensible sorts - like Mrs Fillyjonk - would prepare for Christmas.

It was a dreadful time of year. She had a daughter and a son to buy for, and they had a husband and a wife respectively, and then there was the grandchildren. After the presents, there was the wrapping, the sorting, the mailing. After that, there was the cards to write and send. Of course, all of this had to be done in a home tastefully decorated for the season, and one also had to prepare a lavish meal, even if one was the only one enjoying it. All of these things needed to be done, or else disaster should follow.

Mrs Fillyjonk had taken out the rug from the living room to be washed. She scrubbed from blue stripe to white stripe to blue stripe, ensuring the edges were as clean as the centre, the back as clean as the front.

It was a slow and mild day. For many, the perfect day to sit on the porch with cocoa and a book, or perhaps walk along the river. The kind of day that would make a fool stretch and say ‘Well, nothing can happen today’.

Mrs Fillyjonk was not a fool. No, this would not trick her, she thought! This was exactly the day a disaster could happen on. Things were always peaceful until they were not, and she would not be caught off-guard.

Removing the rug from the tub, she carefully hung it over the line, ensuring it hung symmetrically. It was surely almost time for Moominmamma to visit for tea. So she would have to prepare all of that, and then afterwards would be sweeping up white fur from the carpet and her furniture.

There really was no rest for a fillyjonk! All of that to worry about, and the disaster lurking on the horizon. She could feel it down to the fur on her toes – something awful was brooding under the autumn leaves. Any moment now, it would make itself known.

Suddenly, she quite wanted to be inside. Draining the water from the tub, she rushed back inside, closing the door tight behind her.

****

Mrs Fillyjonk’s house, she had been told, had belonged to her grandmother. A smartly dressed mouth with pearly teeth had told her as much, quite at the same time as sliding a wad of intimidating papers at her. It was the perfect place for an older lady to live, Moominvalley, he had promised, and this was the perfect house.

With her new husband and a child on the way, they could hardly continue to live in their little flat in Fillyjonk Hills. Moving into her grandmother’s house had seemed quite a delightful prospect – Mrs Fillyjonk had never met her grandmother, but a grandmother was inherently a safe and comforting figure, and nothing bad ever happened in a grandmother’s home.

That, and the young man had been very persuasive and very pushy, so she would not have been able to get away without signing those papers, even if she tried.

So, Mrs Fillyjonk bought the three-storeyed house in Moominvalley. She later discovered her grandmother had never lived here at all, but it was too late then. The house was hers, and the pearly-toothed salesman long gone.

The house itself were not the little paradise she had hoped for either. The walls let in the cold, the bathroom attracted mould, and the pipes moaned and groaned all night. Windows rarely closed properly, the stove resisted fire, and little mice and insects found their way in through all the tiny nooks and crannies.

It had been a long time since then. Mrs Fillyjonk’s two children had grown, and then moved away to marry and produce children of their own. Mrs Fillyjonk’s husband had grown bored, and then moved away to marry someone young enough to be his child.

After all that, Mrs Fillyjonk was left with a large and empty house. Remembering her mother’s words about duty, she made the best of it. She wallpapered and cleaned and arranged everything wonderfully. Nobody could tell if windows didn’t close properly if one had immaculate curtains and lace across them. A bathroom would not attract mould if one cleaned it every morning and evening. Mice and insects would not get in if the garden was made of plastic. And one could not get cold if one had many, many lovely possessions and decorations to trap in the heat.

Yet Mrs Fillyjonk could not fend off the sense of disaster. Perhaps a tornado was rumbling towards Moominvalley, ready to rip her home up at the roots and toss it into the sea. Perhaps lightning would strike the tip of the house, setting it ablaze, and she would need to flee with nary a possession of her own. Perhaps terrible men would break in and steal everything, and she would need to flee elsewhere.

The visions of disaster were relentless. As always, Mrs Fillyjonk found her paws shaking as she considered each one. Every disaster was plotting to tear her out of her home and throw her into the horrible wide world.

The strange thing, however, was how she thought of each disaster with longing. As though she almost wanted something so terrible to happen. That was as frightening as the disasters themselves.

Thankfully, Mrs Fillyjonk was rescued from herself by a knock on the door. Moominmamma – a few minutes late, as usual. Probably delayed by some ridiculous mishap with her motley collection of children (most not even hers!).

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Moominmamma said, clutching her dusty handbag and wiping her bare feet off on the rug. “Little My and Moomintroll were having a little argument that needed to be resolved.”

Mrs Fillyjonk very much wanted to scold her for allowing the children to have arguments to begin with – her own son and daughter never argued under her roof! They were much too well-behaved to have anything to argue _about_, after all.

Yet she was the host, and she was meant to be gracious. So, she forced a smile.

“No matter, Moominmamma. Come in, come in, please excuse the mess,” she said, taking the guest slippers from the shoe cubby. “Now, you just step into these, there we go.”

“I don’t usually wear shoes,” Moominmamma said, as she obediently stepped into the slippers. “It feels a little odd.”

“You should! You would have a much cleaner carpet if you all had different types of shoes for different types of surface,” Mrs Fillyjonk said proudly. “I myself have a different set of slippers for every room in the house! This prevents cross-contamination, Moominmamma.”

Moominmamma only crinkled her brow at her.

“I see.”

It did not sound like she saw at all!

The terrible disaster seemed to be looming closer by the second, though what shape it took and from what direction it came, Mrs Fillyjonk could not say.

“I’ll prepare the tea,” Mrs Fillyjonk said. Moominmamma nodded, shuffling into the living room. Mrs Fillyjonk prepared the tea tray, along with a small platter of low-calorie biscuits. The plastic on the sofa squeaked as Moominmamma took a seat, fidgeting in that awkward way of hers, as though she did not know quite how to sit.

Moominmamma would be her only company for the week, and already she wanted her gone. It was difficult to understand: Mrs Fillyjonk wanted company so badly when alone but when she had them she couldn’t wait for them to leave. Perhaps that, again, was another sign of the disaster to come.

Mrs Fillyjonk returned with the tea-tray, setting it down and pouring Moominmamma a cup.

“The house looks lovely,” Moominmamma said, accepting the tea along with two (two!) of the biscuits.

“Yes,” Mrs Fillyjonk said, nibbling the corner off her biscuit and then setting it down on her saucer. “I cleaned it for winter.”

“How nice.”

Moominmamma dipped her biscuit in her tea, even though that would make soggy pieces of biscuit drop to the bottom and cling to the sides. Mrs Fillyjonk gripped her cup tighter.

“You and your family are hibernating again, I suppose, Moominmamma?”

“Yes. Most of us, at least,” she replied. “Snufkin goes down south and Little My spends winter with the Mymble. Sniff may try going to find the Muddler and the Fuzzy this year, he’s getting to that age.”

Mrs Fillyjonk did not know what to do with this. Their household seemed so very disorganised, with so many people who did not even look alike and so many relationships that nobody could put down on paper properly. She cleared her throat and tried to steer the conversation into more comfortable waters.

“Yes, but your real family all sleep for the winter, in traditional moomin fashion, yes?”

Moominmamma’s gaze was reproachful.

“I don’t see why some of them should be real and some of them not.”

Mrs Fillyjonk laughed, even though nothing were funny.

“Of course not, of course not! What a wonderfully bohemian life you lead, Moominmamma.”

Moominmamma did not laugh.

They both sipped their tea.

The plastic squeaked again, as Moominmamma fidgeted. Mrs Fillyjonk set her tea down.

“If you sat properly, you would not make as much noise, Moominmamma,” she said. Moominmamma glanced up at her, surprise.

“Oh? Well…how does one sit properly?”

“It is very simple! One crouches, but does not let one’s legs touch the surface,” she replied, tugging at her dress a little to let Moominmamma see – there was a neat half-inch between herself and the surface of the sofa. She was hovering over it, with great ease and practice.

Moominmamma stared at her for a moment and then attempted to mimic it, but her legs shook with the effort, and she soon collapsed back onto the sofa.

“It seems...well, it seems like it may be a bit much hard work.”

“Keeping things orderly and in control _is_ hard work, Moominmamma!” she said. It was hard work she did every day, and it frustrated her that nobody could see it. Why everyone else acted as though terrible things were always so far away, when they were in fact just looming and lumbering closer and closer, always unseen.

“…I suppose so.”

They fell silent again. Moominmamma reached for another biscuit, and then retracted her paw at Mrs Fillyjonk’s expression. It made Mrs Fillyjonk feel beastly and cruel and she suddenly needed Moominmamma to leave. They clearly did not understand each other in the least and it made her feel like the worst version of herself.

“Well, this has been lovely,” Mrs Fillyjonk said, draining the last dregs of her cup.

“Yes,” Moominmamma said, “I suppose I better be heading home.”

“Ah, let me walk you to the door.”

“Oh, no, it isn’t necessary.”

They fumbled for a few minutes like this, muttering about how they had to get on with such-and-such and how they needed to do this and that and wasn’t it lovely to take some time out of the day for friends and they should surely do it again very soon but they were terribly busy. It was the sort of chattering, looping exchange one had when one very much wanted to spare the feelings of another, but to do precious little else with them.

At the doorway, Mrs Fillyjonk handed Moominmamma her handbag. A slow and terrible twenty minutes had passed since she had arrived. Mrs Fillyjonk had rather envisioned the afternoon differently.

Whenever Moominmamma visited, Mrs Fillyjonk always imagined they would chatter happily and drain the whole teapot, and then another. Mrs Fillyjonk would be charming and gracious, and Moominmamma conscientious and understanding. Moominmamma would be grateful for advice and guidance from the older woman, and Mrs Fillyjonk would feel terribly wise. They would both leave with the satisfaction of another person understanding them well. Disaster would feel far-off, and the world would be as orderly as the china in her cabinet.

Instead, there was always these silences and half-conversations, wherein Mrs Fillyjonk only ever felt either angry or silly. It simply made her realise how horribly out of control the world outside of her home was, and gave her more reason to never leave it.

Suddenly, there it was, the visions of disaster and the frightened longing that gripped her heart tight so often. She needed to tell Moominmamma about it. Well, no. She did not particularly want to tell Moominmamma, she simply needed to tell someone, and who else was there?

“It’s a terribly calm day,” she began. “It does not sit well with me, not at all! Things can only be so calm before something terrible happens. Something awful is going to happen, don’t you think? Isn’t that terribly frightening? Isn’t it horrible, to have to live such small and peaceful lives when it could all be mercilessly torn apart, at any moment, by nothing at all? Don’t you find it so, Moominmamma, don’t you feel how hopeless and terrifying everything is?”

For a moment, Moominmamma did not reply. She simply stood clasping her handbag, looking shocked Mrs Fillyjonk would say such a thing. For a flickering moment, Mrs Fillyjonk hoped she would agree – that everything was so terrible, and she had such good reason to be so frightened, and that she felt frightened too, just as badly.

“Why, I suppose terrible things can happen, and it can be frightening,” Moominmamma said instead, much too calmly for Mrs Fillyjonk’s taste. “Yet life would be rather boring without the occasional upheaval, don’t you think?”

Mrs Fillyjonk deflated. That was not what she wanted to hear at all. Soothing words did nothing to set her at ease – it just made her feel stupid and small for having worried at all.

“I suppose so,” she said, although she did not in the least. “Goodbye, Moominmamma.”

****

Mrs Fillyjonk always put herself in bed at 9pm sharp. She would begin preparing for bed at 8pm – changing into her nightgown, brushing her teeth, combing her fur and hair. At 9pm, she would lay down in bed. After that, she would read her book for thirty minutes. No more (even if the book were exciting) and no less (even if the book were boring). And then, regardless of how tired she did or didn’t feel, she would shut her eyes, and lie very still for as long as it took for sleep to claim her.

Very frequently, this took a long time indeed. It is remarkable how loudly and quickly one’s mind can work while lying in the dark.

That night, Mrs Fillyjonk was kept awake thinking again and again of her tea party with Moominmamma. Sometimes she would be angry Moominmamma understood her so little, and then she would be regretful that she had failed to express herself, and then she would be mournful for what a lovely afternoon she could have had if she were the Mrs Fillyjonk she was in her own head. And then she would assert to herself it were all Moominmamma’s fault for being a lout, and she would go right back to being angry again.

This could have continued for a good few hours, but it was cut short by a noise from downstairs. A rattling and scrunching, like things being moved around and dug through, and a pattering like mice feet.

Normally, Mrs Fillyjonk would stick to her schedule. She would dismiss such noises as a too-active imagination, and close her eyes tighter, and pray for sleep to come sooner. The old house made such noises, sometimes.

Yet that night, quite sure this was the disaster she was so frightened of, Mrs Fillyjonk couldn’t bring herself to lie still.

Sweeping the blanket off, Mrs Fillyjonk found her bedroom slippers and got up to investigate. The noises were coming from downstairs. She changed into her stairwell slippers, and then her second floor slippers, and then her stairwell slippers again, until finally she were in her living room slippers, still unable to find the noise.

That left one option, and it was one that made Mrs Fillyjonk’s heart plummet.

Mrs Fillyjonk did not much like the basement. A basement could not be made orderly, it was simply not in the nature of basements. Regardless of what effort one made, a basement would always be messy and dark and strange.

Mrs Fillyjonk rarely ventured there. She would occasionally move trash to the basement to get it out of the way, but she would do so quickly, and she would not look around.

She pressed her ear to the door and found, yes, the noises were most certainly from the basement. She swapped into her basement slippers, lit a kerosene lamp, and opened the door. The stone stairs were dark and grey, and cold even through the slippers.

The noises grew louder as she quietly made her way down the stairs. Something, in that deep dark basement, was moving.

It was terrifying. Here it was, finally, the disaster she’d believed in. Mrs Fillyjonk wanted to bolt back up the stairs, locking the door and the disaster behind her.

She perhaps would have, if she were not a little thrilled as well.

At the foot of the stairs, there were something sneaking on top of the trashcans. Barely able to breathe, Mrs Fillyjonk swung around to shine her lamp on it.

“Ah!”

The disaster collapsed, bringing the bins down with it in a cacophony of metal clanging. The disaster had fallen head-first in, and was rolling around on the floor with her short legs kicking desperately.

“_Misabel_?” Mrs Fillyjonk gasped.

“Madame?” came Misabel’s muffled reply. She sat up, the trash can still lodged on her head.

What a disappointment! Finally, a real disaster, and it was just little Misabel, rummaging through her bins!

“Misabel, what on earth are you here for? I fired you _weeks_ ago!” Mrs Fillyjonk said, hands on her hips.

“Oh, I know, Madame. So I came to pack my bags but then I got to thinking about how I had nowhere to go and I didn’t know what to do and it all seemed so hopeless,” Misabel said, the usual mournfulness of her voice doubled as it echoed around the trash can. “So I lay down to cry a bit, and then I ate some of Madame’s garbage, and I suppose I just kept doing that until now.”

Misabel lay down, apparently having already given up on getting the trash can off her head.

“Well…” Mrs Fillyjonk started, but she could not have a sensible conversation with a trash can. “For goodness sakes, at least climb out of there!”

“I’m stuck.”

“You hardly tried!”

“I tried enough.”

Oh this was ridiculous! Huffing, Mrs Fillyjonk set the kerosene lamp down on a step and took the can in her paws. It was stuck, Misabel having managed to jam herself in quite thoroughly, but with a bit of yanking it came loose. Misabel tumbled out, along with a great quantity of garbage.

“Oh, this mess!” Mrs Fillyjonk cried.

“I suppose you’d like me to clean it up, Madame,” Misabel said. “Though it wouldn’t do any good.”

“I won’t waste my time! You are not a real maid anyway! You and Moominmamma were just playing a childish prank!”

Misabel at least had the good graces to look a little guilty at that. Huffing and muttering about how petty they were, Mrs Fillyjonk scooped up the garbage and returned it to the can. Her fur and nightgown got rather messy in the process. She would have to start her whole bedtime routine again. She would get to bed at 11pm at this rate – perhaps even later! And then she would inevitably wake late and she wouldn’t get the bathroom its morning clean and she would not have a proper breakfast and she would fall terribly behind on everything and not have time to send her grandchildren Christmas presents or her neighbours cards and they would all think she were a terribly slovenly fillyjonk.

A disaster indeed!

“You are not to stay in my basement a minute longer, Misabel,” Mrs Fillyjonk said when she had stood up straight, forcing herself not to look at the stains on her nightgown.

“I suppose not,” Misabel said sadly. “I simply cannot think where to go.”

Mrs Fillyjonk paused at that. It did seem terrible, to send someone outside when there was nowhere for them to go.

“Now…surely, you must have…a husband? A mother? A son? A sister? At least_ somebody_ who will take you?”

“I have some of those, but none would take me. I’m a complete nuisance, you see.”

Mrs Fillyjonk could hardly disagree, but she rather didn’t want to get into it. She was tired and filthy and just wanted to get back to bed.

“Well,” she said, “for the time being, you may sleep upstairs on the sofa. Simply do so quietly, and do not make a mess! And do not eat any more of the garbage. In a morning you must have a proper bath.”

To her great amazement, Misabel lit up at this.

“Madame is much too kind.”

Hmph! What nonsense!

Kind!

She could hardly recall the last time someone called her that.

****

It began to rain terribly the next morning. Mrs Fillyjonk woke to it thrashing against the window pain, the wind whistling through the gaps in the walls.

“My laundry!” she cried immediately, thinking of the striped rug still on the line. She sped out, pausing to switch to her garden shoes and put on her burgundy raincoat. It was worse than simply wet – the rug had been blown off the line completely, and now lay half over her fence, half in the _real_ grass. With all the mud and insects and all such untidy things.

Barely able to contain her horror, Mrs Fillyjonk scooped the rug up, rushing it back into the house as though it were an injured child. She unrolled it on the floor, where it squelched and oozed mess.

“Terrible, terrible, everything is terrible! What a terrible morning! What a terrible storm! How terrible it is to be Mrs Fillyjonk!” she raged to herself. It did not matter that she did not even like this rug. What mattered was that now it was ruined.

“Madame?”

Mrs Fillyjonk jumped, looking up to see Misabel lifting her head from the sofa, blinking slowly. In her haste to try and rescue her poor laundry, she had quite forgotten the other woman was there.

For a long moment they looked at each other, neither quite certain what do with the other. After a while, Misabel spoke again, deep voice uncertain.

“Would Madame like assistance cleaning the rug?”

Mrs Fillyjonk sighed.

“No, Misabel. You are a terrible maid. And even if you weren’t, this rug is much beyond cleaning,” she said, bundling the rug back up.

“Oh,” Misabel said, considering this. Mrs Fillyjonk hoped she would not begin to offer solutions on how the rug could be cleaned, because she suddenly wanted very much to just throw it out and be done with the wretched thing entirely.

To her great relief, Misabel only said:

“That is an awful shame. How horrid for you.”

She smiled a little, suddenly cheered up.

“It _is_,” she said. “Now I will put this rug in the garbage downstairs, and then we will have breakfast.”

Misabel nodded. Mrs Fillyjonk changed into her basement slippers and went down, quickly disposing of the rug in one of the bins. There would be one last garbage collection before winter settled in – she would have to make sure it was all taken.

She came back up to Misabel struggling to lift herself from the plastic on the sofa, muttering things like ‘Oh bother’ and ‘Oh dear, oh dear’. The plastic squeaked and clung to her, sucking her back down to the sofa.

Mrs FIllyjonk decided to leave her to it.

For breakfast, she hardboiled eggs and cut toast into soldiers, each two inches long and precisely half an inch wide. She arranged them like lattice on the plate, next to the white egg-cup with its pink egg, and laid a small spoon at the edge of the plate.

She stared at her breakfast for a long moment, and then she made it again. Misabel would probably need to eat before she left.

Besides, she had quite liked it when Misabel called her kind the night before. It would be nice, she thought, if she said it again. Perhaps if she were given breakfast she would.

Yes she decided. She would be kind today. She was sure she used to be kind, it couldn’t be difficult to do it again.

She set the table, serving them each a small cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice each. She never took milk or sugar – much too bad for one’s health – but she filled up the little silver milk jug and stacked a few sugar cubes on a plate all the same, placing it at the centre of the table with the salt and pepper. Pleased, she rang the bell on the kitchen counter.

“Breakfast, Misabel.”

Satisfied, she sat at the table and tapped the top of her egg with the silver spoon. Carefully, she picked off the top shards of eggshell and folded them into paper napkin. From the living room, she could hear the squeak of the sofa plastic, and Misabel’s gentle complaints. It took a long while, but Misabel finally tottered out, one side of her face very red, and her hair sticking up entirely in one direction.

Mrs Fillyjonk pursed her lips.

“Did you brush your hair?”

It was out of her mouth before she could stop herself. Misabel stopped, and patted at her wild hair ineffectively with her paw. It did not settle.

“I lost my brush, Madame,” Misabel explained. She stood there, frowning.

“Well, find it next time,” Mrs Fillyjonk snapped. Misabel nodded, looking miserable yet again, and took a seat opposite her. Mrs Fillyjonk was rather tall, and Misabel was rather short, so it took a lot of awkward scrambling before she managed to get up there comfortably.

“Well. I made breakfast,” Mrs Fillyjonk said, attempting to smile. “Please enjoy.”

Misabel did not smile in the bright and cheering way she way last night. She merely looked down at the plate, a little uncertain.

“Thank you, Madame.”

Mrs Fillyjonk frowned.

“Now, let’s put an end to that ‘madame’ business. You are no longer my maid,” she said. “And you’re almost as old as I am! Mrs Fillyjonk will do.”

“Yes, Mrs Fillyjonk.”

This did not satisfy her, but Mrs Fillyjonk could not say why.

“Are you Mrs Misabel?” she asked, suddenly curious. Misabel had lived an eventful week in her house, and then much longer than that in secret, but Mrs Fillyjonk still knew precious little about the other woman.

“I’m not the sort of lady a gentleman wants to marry, Mada- Mrs Fillyjonk,” Misabel said mournfully. “I was born all mixed up, you see.”

At this, she stared at Mrs Fillyjonk in a way that one anyone else would be a challenge.

“I see,” Mrs Fillyjonk said, although in all honesty she did not see in the least

Misabel hesitated, and then looked as though she had come to some sort of decision.

“I was considered a '_mister'_, when I was younger, Mrs Fillyjonk.”

Mrs Fillyjonk tried to keep her face straight. She supposed it made sense – the moomin family were such a bohemian bunch, always taking in those that didn’t do things right and proper. It only followed that Misabel was one such person.

She supposed the right and proper thing to do would be to tell Misabel firmly she wouldn’t have such nonsense in her home, but after the morning storm and her ruined rug and the little sleep she had last night, Mrs Fillyjonk didn’t have the energy to be right and proper. If she was honest, she didn’t really understand what she would even be acting so right and proper _about_.

If she was honest, it didn't really change anything at all. Misabel was still Misabel. She'd never known her as anything else.

“Ms Misabel, then,” she said instead. “You’re too old to be a ‘Miss’, of course. You would sound simply ridiculous, trying to sound young like that.”

Misabel made an odd wheezy noise. It took Mrs Fillyjonk a moment to realise she was laughing.

“I never liked being young anyway,” she said. “Everyone expects you to run about and play games and I was never any good at that. I just wanted to sit and be quiet.”

“Did you?” she asked, trying to remember what she had wanted as a child. Even as a little fillygirl, she was sure she hadn’t ran around playing games, but she couldn’t really remember what she _had_ done.

“Yes. But somehow or another I was always in trouble anyway…”

She looked so sad at that it made Mrs Fillyjonk feel quite lost. She was no good with sad people. She was no good with happy people either. In fact, she much preferred if people just kept all their feelings neat and tidy and out of her way.

“Eat your egg, Misabel,” she instructed.

Misabel nodded, taking the egg into her paw and then smashing it hard against the plate. She then pulled out pieces of egg and shoved it into her mouth. Mrs Fillyjonk could only watch in silent horror as Misabel made more of a mess eating a boiled egg than should have been remotely possible.

They finished breakfast in silence, apart from the quiet smacking sound of Misabel eating, and the tapping of Mrs Fillyjonk’s endlessly nervous feet against the tiled floor. Outside, the storm had quietened to a still-heavy rain, hissing black against the windows.

Breakfast finished, Mrs Fillyjonk bundled up the plates and started to wash them.

Normally, she had eaten breakfast and washed the dishes and dried them all and put them back at this point. She would then search the house for any dust or grime or anything she missed – perhaps skirting boards that needed polishing, or the tops of wardrobes that needed dusting. After she had found whatever she could, she would attend to the seasonal chores. Today, that would be looking through catalogues for Christmas presents.

She’d hardly have the time to do any of that, now! She’d had breakfast for lunch and now everything was wrong and the whole afternoon suddenly opened in a way that made her feel uneasy.

The foreboding feeling of disaster returned, the weight of it as though it were curled invisible around her house, the coils of it wrapping tighter with every drop of rain.

She left the wet dishes on the drying rack, suddenly quite lacking the energy to dry them and put them away properly. They sat in a menacing little mess, but that little pile felt like very little, compared to terror waiting outside of her home.

Misabel had remained at the kitchen table, and was watching the rain through her window, elbow on the table, chin resting on her palm.

“So you really have nowhere to go?” Mrs Fillyjonk asked, returning to the dining room and wiping her soapy paws on her sleeves.

“My sister may take me in,” Misabel said. “I doubt she would be happy to see me, though…”

Mrs Fillyjonk was about to say that she wasn’t surprised to hear that, and then she remembered how she had decided to be kind today.

“Why not?” she said instead.

“I left my little dog Pimple with her, for pet-sitting. And then I never came back.”

“Well, that’s –“

“For three years.”

“Three years!” Mrs Fillyjonk repeated, startled into shouting. “Well, why on earth did you do that!”

“I just never went back, I suppose,” she said. “Pimple will be much better off with her. She is very responsible and she doesn’t spill pet food everywhere, and she can find him a little cat to play with…”

“Harrumph! Rubbish! Now, I think pets are a waste of time and much too untidy, but your pet is your pet!” Mrs Fillyjonk snapped, suddenly angry. “One should take responsibility, always!”

“I suppose…”

“Oh, don’t just agree if you don’t mean it!” she said, too angry to wonder why she was angry. Misabel looked down at the floor, nose scrunching up.

“Well, perhaps I should travel to my sister’s home and get him,” Misabel said.

“Perhaps you should!”

They sat in angry silence for a while.

“Well, it’s raining much too heavily for a woman by herself –“ Mrs Fillyjonk began.

“It’s rather cold, and I don’t have rain boots –“ Misabel said, at the same time.

The anger between them dissolved. They suddenly both felt rather embarrassed.

“Let’s be sensible, then,” Mrs Fillyjonk said. “We will wait for the rain to stop, and then you will go. But you will make yourself useful in the meantime!”

Misabel looked terribly upset at this.

“I’m not sure I can be.”

“Rot. Everyone can be useful. You just need to make some effort and find out how,” Mrs Fillyjonk said briskly, not in the business of sympathising with people who already spent so much time sympathising with themselves. Misabel squashed her lips together and crinkled her nose, clearly not believing a word.

Huffing, Mrs Fillyjonk went to where she stored her stationary, extracting a neat folder of envelopes, cards, and letter paper, as well as her address book and stamp book.

“I need to write letters to my children and get started on Christmas cards,” she said.

“Children?” Misabel asked.

“Yes,” Mrs Fillyjonk said proudly, setting the pile of writing equipment on the dining table. “My son and daughter. They’re both grown now, and _very_ successful. My son is a doctor and has a lovely wife. And my daughter is a lovely wife and married an architect.”

“They don’t live here?” Misabel asked, glancing about, as though one of them were about to pop out of a flower pot. Mrs Fillyjonk tutted.

“My children are not like that lazy boy at the Moominhouse,” she said. “They moved out as soon as they were old enough to. I write to invite them for dinner every Christmas, of course. Unfortunately, it’s a long journey for the grandchildren, so it has not been feasible these past few years.”

Well, that’s what they said. In recent years, her grandchildren had begun walking and talking and even attending school, so now they said that the children were much too used to their routine to uproot it so suddenly with a trip to Moominvalley. Which Mrs Fillyjonk completely understood! Children needed strict order and routine to grow up well, of course, of course, it was all very straight-forward and not personal in the least!

“Don’t look so tragic Misabel!” she snapped suddenly, not at all enjoying the sad look Misabel was giving her. “What are you thinking to make you look so sad?”

“Ah. Well…I know I’m just a lowly useless maid who can’t even clean, but…it seems as though you’d rather like to see them,” she said, and then her expression brightened for a moment. “You could visit them, instead.”

“Absolutely not!” Mrs Fillyjonk said, clutching her necklace at the thought. Travelling all the way from Moominvalley to Fillyjonk Hills by herself! It would be horribly dangerous. There was nothing but sneaky joxters and tricky creeps and awful giggling fairies wandering the roads, along with a great deal of terribly untidy nature and unpredictable storms and earthquakes and spiders and scorpions and shipwrecks and sickness and who knew what else!

A sensible fillyjonk of her age didn’t even go past the picket fence of her garden unless she absolutely had to. While disaster could always still find its way to one’s home, at least one couldn’t wander blithely into it.

And besides, a sensible fillyjonk never went where she wasn’t wanted.

“No, going to see them myself is quite out of the question,” she said.

“Oh,” Misabel said, sagging in her chair. “I suppose it was a stupid idea…”

Mrs Fillyjonk wasn’t sure what to do with someone who spoke so poorly of themselves all the time. It was horribly awkward; one couldn’t reasonably spend all of one’s time comforting them, especially as such people would so rarely listen.

“Now, now,” she said, a bit awkwardly (as that is really the only way anyone can say ‘Now, now’). “They may well decide to visit this year. The children will be old enough, after all.”

Mrs Fillyjonk found her ink and pen, setting them at the kitchen table neatly.

“Now, onto how you can be useful…” she said, taking a seat opposite her. “You can lick stamps and seal envelopes, and then later you can borrow my umbrella and run to the post box at the bottom of the path.”

“Are you sure? I will probably drop them…”

“Then I will put them in a plastic package, so even if you drop them it does not matter,” Mrs Fillyjonk insisted.

“They will probably get blown away by the wind.”

“I will tie a paperweight to them so that won’t be possible.”

“I will lose them on the way.”

“Well, then I will tie them to _you_ so you cannot even do that!”

“I may even eat them!”

“I – what? Now why in goodness’s name would you eat my mail?”

“I don’t know,” Misabel said glumly. “It just seems like something I would do.”

There was something so absurd about this that Mrs Fillyjonk couldn’t help it, she started laughing, covering her mouth with her paw. Misabel gawked at her, eyes very round. Mrs Fillyjonk couldn’t blame her for that. She usually tried not to laugh – it was terribly unbecoming, after all – but it was just so silly she couldn’t help it.

“Well then!” she said. “I will make sure the envelope tastes horrible. Rest assured, Misabel, there is no amount of incompetence I am not capable of accounting for. I have been married, after all.”

Misabel’s mouth wobbled into a thin smile.

“I suppose I’ve met my match then,” she said. Mrs Fillyjonk dipped her pen in her ink pot, glancing up at her.

“Perhaps you have. Now, you can begin by affixing a single stamp to each envelope. Try it once and show me your work, I will decide if it is passable or not before you continue.”

Misabel prompted managed to rip an envelope in two. Mrs Fillyjonk did not even look up from her letter.

“Use the next one,” she instructed, “and keep doing that until you get it right.”

Misabel did. It was surprising how easy something could become, doing that.

****

The rain did not stop that day, or the next, or the one after that. In fact, the rain showed no signs of even slowing. Misabel stayed in Mrs Fillyjonk’s house. Mrs Fillyjonk, determined not to have a lollygagger under her roof, came up with more and more things that Misabel could do. Misabel, every time, was rather convinced she was not capable, so this forced Mrs Fillyjonk to be clever, and figure out how to make something impossible to fail.

A typical conversation would go something like this:

“Misabel, I need you to bring up all the Christmas decorations from the basement.”

“Oh, that’s no good. I am far too weak to carry them.”

“Then you must carry one box at a time.”

“Even one box is far too much for a miserable fat old thing like me.”

“Then you must take the decorations out and carry them up one at a time.”

“Oh, they’re all so fragile, I’ll drop and break them.”

“Then you must carry them in this little velvet pouch, to cushion the fall.”

“It will create a horrible mess, just dumping the decorations separately.”

“Then you must set an empty box at the top of the stairs to put the decorations in.”

And so on and so forth. No matter how miserable Misabel tried to be, Mrs Fillyjonk would continue to be strict and find some way to make her misery quite impossible. She was quite good at it – Misabel had yet to win a round yet. The strangest thing was that with each game, Mrs Fillyjonk would always reach a point where she would begin to laugh, and Misabel would look oddly pleased with herself.

Perhaps she was not winning as frequently as she thought, Mrs Fillyjonk mused. But that would mean Misabel was playing a different game entirely, and she could not understand what.

After breakfast and before lunch, Mrs Fillyjonk would work her way through writing Christmas cards. Misabel would apply stamps and put each card in an envelope, copying out the address in her clumsy handwriting (she wrote in pencil – Mrs Fillyjonk wasn’t wasting good ink on someone prone to getting pencils stuck up her nose).

On the afternoon, Mrs Fillyjonk devoted her time to cleaning up whatever mess Misabel had managed to make in the morning, and then to the Christmas decoration.

Mrs Fillyjonk used to do all the decoration in one fell swoop, but with Misabel around it was much slower – every piece had to come up from the basement, make its way to the box, and then somehow it would take all afternoon to find a place for it.

“Misabel, move it more to the left! It is not nearly centred!”

“I think it would look too brash, in the centre…”

“That is where it goes, now move it!”

“As Madame commands…”

“No, no, no! That is much too far! Further right!”

“Perhaps it would look jolly enough on the floor.”

“A stocking does not belong on the floor!”

“Are you sure? Many things are quite at home on the floor. I like being there myself.”

“Misabel!”

It went like that.

So piece by piece, the Christmas decorations moved up from the basement, and found their place on the walls. Fairy lights tastefully wound around curtain poles, and snow globes found their ways to windowsills and mantelpieces. The salt and pepper shakers were swapped out for ones with red and white stripes, and glass snowflakes hung from the stair railings.

The rain continued, pattering against the windows that never quite shut properly, filling the entire valley with a mist that Mrs Fillyjonk would normally find terribly foreboding.

Yet, for whatever reason, disaster felt very far away.

****

One morning, the rain stopped. It was very sudden. Mrs Fillyjonk awoke to find every cloud in the sky gone, as though they’d all decided that enough was enough and it was time to go home. The winter sky was grey and clear, and the mist had lifted, revealing the empty valley. She could see the white-capped mountains in the distance, and jolly little Moominhouse, where all the residents were long asleep.

Mrs Fillyjonk bundled her dressing gown tighter around herself, shivering at the breeze whistling in through the gaps in the windows. It was terrible, she decided, to see everything so empty and open like that. It made one realise how vast and cold the world was. If someone important was to get lost in it, it would be impossible to find them again.

She closed the curtains.

Downstairs, she was surprised to find Misabel already awake. She was standing on her stood in the kitchen, struggling to unscrew the percolator for their morning coffee.

Mrs Fillyjonk watched her for a moment. Today, Misabel would drink her coffee and pack her tiny case and then she would go to see her sister and pick up her little dog. And then, wonderfully, Mrs Fillyjonk would be able to get back to her normal, orderly life. Perfectly scheduled, perfectly organised, always clean and always tidy.

Misabel pulled too hard on the percolator and it came apart, scattering damp coffee grounds across the counter.

“Oh misery,” she said. Before Mrs Fillyjonk could do anything, Misabel began trying to scoop up the coffee grounds with her paws. She also began trying to eat them.

“Stop that! The toilet will be in a terrible state later if you continue on like that,” she said, making Misabel jump and drop a pawful of coffee grounds on the floor.

“Ah! Oh dear…oh dear…” Misabel said, staring down at the wet clump of coffee on the clean kitchen tiles. “What a mess I have made…I just wanted to make the coffee this morning instead, since I shall leave today, after all…”

Stiffening at the mention of Misabel’s departure, Mrs Fillyjonk tore off a sheet of kitchen roll and picked up the worst of the coffee, tossing it in the bin, before getting the rest with her dustpan and brush.

“I never showed you how to use the pot. It’s no wonder you did not know how to go about it,” she said.

“Oh…yes, of course…how stupid I am…“

“Oh, don’t mope!” Mrs FIllyjonk interrupted, before Misabel could slink off to find a dark corner to sulk in. “I will show you now! It is a sensible skill, being able to make coffee.”

She mopped up the last of the coffee grounds from the floor and counter, and went to stand next to Misabel.

“Now, there are three parts to this pot! At the bottom here is the base. One must fill it with water up to the marking here,” she said, showing each part in term. “On top of that we have the basket, which must be cleaned thoroughly – but not soapily – and filled with coffee grounds. Finally, we have the carafe. The carafe must be very cleaned and screwed on top very tight, else the coffee will leak out.”

Misabel watched her carefully, nodding very seriously at each point she brought up. She looked as though she were seconds away from taking notes.

“You see, when placed over heat, the water in the base will boil. It will then filter through the coffee grounds, comes up through the stem here,” Mrs Fillyjonk continued, quite enjoying her new teacher role now. She gestured at the stem in the centre of the carafe. “It will then fill the carafe with coffee.”

“What a clever gadget!” Misabel said.

“Of course it’s clever!” Mrs Fillyjonk preened. “It’s _Italian_.”

“You’ve been to Italy, Mrs Fillyjonk?” Misabel asked. Mrs Fillyjonk paused, a bit embarrassed.

“Well. No. But I ordered it from an Italian catalogue. _Sì, naturalmente,_” she said. Misabel still looked terribly impressed at that. A little flustered, Mrs Fillyjonk rubbed her nose.

“Now, let’s see you clean the basket out,” she said, thrusting the little metal bowl into Misabel’s paws. She stood next to her at the sink with her arms folded as Misabel rinsed the basket clean. At first she simply stuck it under the tap, but after Mrs Fillyjonk’s firm reprimands she washed it properly, ensuring the water ran through it cleanly and easily. Next she tackled the carafe and basket, bumping her hip against Mrs Fillyjonk’s as she worked.

Mrs Fillyjonk had quite forgotten how warm another person could be. The thought burrowed into her chest, a strange and lonely little thing, and made her quite sad when Misabel retreated to fetch the coffee out of the fridge.

Misabel filled the basket with coffee and fit the percolator together, as Mrs Fillyjonk struck a match to light the hob. Waiting for the coffee, they stood in companionable silence for a while, the kitchen filling with the rich smell of coffee.

“It’s stopped raining,” Misabel said, looking out of the window.

“Yes.”

“That being the case…I suppose I should pack my case after breakfast.”

“That’s what we agreed.”

They stood there a while longer, Mrs Fillyjonk wishing for the clouds to roll back in and cut the house off from the rest of the world again. She was about to say something else when there was a sharp knock at the door.

She recognised that neat little rat-tat: it was the Valley postman.

Surprised, Mrs Fillyjonk headed to the door. She hadn’t expected replies from her son and daughter so soon. She knew it would be much the same again this year. All the same, she looked forward to the notes. It was simply nice to get mail.

Although, perhaps Misabel had a point. The children would be old enough to make the journey to Moominvalley now. There was a bus, after all. Perhaps this year they could spend Christmas together.

The postman greeted her as politely as he usually did, and then handed her two small packages wrapped in brown paper.

The packages surprised her – normally Christmas gifts arrived later. They would send their letter saying no, then their cards, and then their presents would arrive on Christmas Eve or so.

She signed for them and then took them into the living room, crouching over the couch to open them.

“What is it, Mrs Fillyjonk?” Misabel asked, leaning on her tiptoes to peek over the top of the couch.

“My son and my daughter have sent Christmas presents early, I believe. Very organised of them! I approve,” she said, even though she were quietly worried why they would turn up later. The disaster squeezed the house tighter.

Misabel smiled.

“How nice,” she said. Most of the time, people said ‘how nice’ when they had nothing else to add, and didn’t really think it was that nice. Yet Misabel said it as though she really did think it was very nice. What a strange woman.

She recognised her daughter’s neat handwriting on the front. She untied the string and let the brown paper unfurl on the coffee table. On top laid a little note, folded once and sealed with a rough scrap of tape. She popped it open.

_Mother,_

_Thank you so much for your invitation. Unfortunately, my husband has a great deal of work over the winter period. We will be much too busy to visit you this year._

_I hope you enjoy the gift._

_Sincerely,_

_Your daughter_

This was exactly what she expected, and thus it did not upset her in the least. Not at all.

Underneath the note was the gift – a boxed hot chocolate set, the sort one bought at the gifts section of a department store. It came with a candy-striped enamel mug, a pouch of chocolate buttons, and a few candy canes to stir it with. Mrs Fillyjonk frowned. It was a thoughtful gift, she supposed, were she someone who drank milk, or ate chocolate, or ate sugar.

Mrs Fillyjonk forced a smile and presented it to Misabel.

“This is from my daughter,” she said. “There’s no need for it right now. Take it to the basement in a moment, will you?”

Misabel looked at the gift, frowning.

“You don’t eat chocolate,” she pointed out.

“It’s the thought that counts!” Mrs Fillyjonk snapped. Misabel’s brow only furrowed more at that, but she did not argue the point any further.

It was her son’s wife’s handwriting on the next package (men were terribly lazy with buying gifts, after all). The note inside was much the same, on lined paper with a tear in the corner.

_Dear Grandma Fillyjonk,_

_Thank you very much for your kind invitation. Unfortunately, we will be much too busy over the winter holidays. The children are very settled here in Fillyjonk Hills, and we do not want to disturb them with a long bus journey._

_Please enjoy this gift. _

_Mrs Fillyjonk_

Wrapped in with the note was a little china kitten, with a sweet, wide-eyed expression and a little pink nose.

Mrs Fillyjonk stared at the note and the present.

“Well then,” she said. She set the china kitten on the coffee table and looked at it. It stared back at her emptily. She didn’t like cats terribly much. She certainly hadn’t said anything about a fondness for them to her son’s wife. Yet a gift was a gift, and should be displayed as such. And it fit in with all the knickknacks lining her walls.

A dreadful storm would smash every last piece of it.

And it was surely coming. A calamity that would rip the roof off and tear down the picket fences and tip over the china cabinet and the whole world would be nothing but shattering and crashing and pieces of china strewn like shards of bone. There would be nothing she could do to prevent the horrible thing happening. Worse yet, she would sit and wait for it for the rest of her life, with her heart in the back of her mouth, sitting amid things that just existed to be either boxed away or broken.

“Madame?”

Mrs Fillyjonk jumped. She had been so consumed with thoughts of the world ending that she had rather forgotten Misabel was there. Misabel looked up at her, the letters clutched in her paws.

“Give me those!” Mrs Fillyjonk barked, snatching the letters away from her, scrunching them between her fingers. “You know one can be thrown in a hemulen jail for reading another person’s mail, Misabel!”

“That doesn’t frighten me,” Misabel replied. “I’ve been to jail before, but they said I was much too gloomy and threw me back out.”

“Don’t tell such silly stories.”

“It’s not silly, it happened to me.”

“Then stop having such silly things happen to you!” she snapped, and then collapsed back onto the couch, glimpsing at the letters again. The plastic around the sofa squeaked and clung to her horribly.

“I don’t mean for them to,” Misabel said, still watching her cautiously. There was something in her face she didn’t like. As though Misabel felt sorry for her, which was absurd! Mrs Fillyjonk was a successful woman who had a house and a husband (on paper), and two lovely and successful children! And Misabel was a little wandering maid who hated cleaning and hadn’t been back for her dog in three years. It was already mortifying enough to be pitied.

She tried to sit up, but it was difficult with the sofa cover. Why did she insist on keeping everything so clean anyway? Nobody ever visited her, after all. She could smear mud and winter snow across the whole sofa and it would never matter.

Again, she wished for some huge and terrible disaster. It would be lovely, she thought, if a tornado came and picked up the whole house and hurled the entire thing into the sea. She’d swim among the shattered china like she’d just escaped a sinking ship, and then wash up on a beach where nobody knew her and nobody would ever find her.

“It is horribly sad that your children do not want to visit,” Misabel said, still staring at the china kitten. “My family doesn’t want me around either.”

Mrs Fillyjonk supposed she couldn’t argue that her son and daughter rather wanted to visit. The excuses were as flimsy as the scraps of paper in her paws.

“I simply don’t understand it!” Mrs Fillyjonk spat. “I was an excellent mother! I was very strict and kept everything very orderly! I made sure they ate seven pieces of fruits and vegetables a day, they never missed a day of school, I never let them get muddy or scrape their knees! They –“

They had never been much allowed to do anything, now she thought about it.

“Well! It was for their own good!” she shouted. “They have me to thank for how good and easy their lives have turned out, and yet I never hear a word of it! Terrible, terrible, ungrateful children!”

Mrs FIllyjonk stood and hurled the china kitten, as hard as she could. This was not very hard, but it still fell a few feet away and cracked. Misabel instantly leapt to her feet to scoop it up.

“Oh leave it, Misabel! What does it matter!” she said. Throwing the kitten should have made her feel better, but it only made her anger turn into a great sadness, the kind that made one want to sink to the floor and lie there. She sighed. “Every day nothing at all happens and nothing changes, and we are stuck with it all forever. One can only hope for disaster.”

“Disaster, Mrs Fillyjonk?” Misabel asked, digging under the sofa for the china kitten’s ear.

“Yes, Misabel,” she said. “When things are so calm, all I can think about is how horribly they could go.”

“Oh, yes!” Misabel said cheerfully, popping back out from under the sofa with a kitten ear in her paw. “When I am walking through the woods, all I think is how there could be an enormous earthquake that topples the trees and kills me horribly.”

“Quite, quite!” Mrs Fillyjonk said. “I, for one, cannot go for a swim without thinking about how I could get tangled in some seaweed and drown.”

“I can barely chop onions without thinking about how I could easily slice off one of my fingers.”

“Ha! Indeed!” Mrs Fillyjonk said. “I always imagine choking. One cannot have dinner without imagining choking and dying.”

“Or poisoning!” Misabel cried. “Every time I cook dinner I always think I must have made some foolish mistake somewhere, and I will end up poisoning everyone.”

“Yes, yes! Or that there is a gas leak and everyone will suffocate in it.”

“Or blow the house up!”

“Perhaps the ceilings will fall in!”

“Or there’ll be a fire!”

“Or an axe murderer!”

“A tornado!”

“A plague!”

They both collapsed back, laughing helplessly. Tears sprung at the corner of Mrs Fillyjonk’s eyes and her stomach began to hurt, and it was a struggle to calm down. Still a little wheezy, she wiped at face with her daughter’s letter. She glanced at it again – those stale words, written in ink that were now blotchy and running.

“Although, with all that said…” she said, certain she’d never voiced this thought before. “Sometimes, I think it would be nice for things to go horribly in a dramatic way, rather than horribly in a boring way.”

“Oh yes,” Misabel agreed. “It can be rather disappointing, to wait for something terrible, but then it happens and it’s only a little dull.”

“It is nice to be understood,” Mrs Fillyjonk said, smiling and fiddling with the collar of her dress. Misabel nodded.

“Quite.”

They both smiled at each other rather stupidly for a moment, before Mrs Fillyjonk heard something bubbling and rattling from the kitchen.

“The _coffee_!” she cried, rushing off and almost knocking Misabel over in the process. 

****

It was an odd day, after coffee. Misabel began to pack her little suitcase and Mrs Fillyjonk hovered around her and watched. She was not sure if Misabel was packing very slowly on purpose, or if she was simply as slow as she usually was. Outside, the grass was pale with frost, spiderwebs glimmering between branches and pine needles. It looked so empty and cold out there, and Misabel alone would look so tiny and lost amongst it.

Of course, it was not that Mrs Fillyjonk _wanted_ her to stay. That would be terribly odd and improper of her, and Mrs Fillyjonk was nothing if not extremely normal and very proper.

Yes, Misabel would leave, and Mrs Fillyjonk would go back to eating a boiled egg in the morning, and dusting things that didn’t need dusting and cleaning things that were already spotless. She would get Christmas cards from the neighbours, from distant relatives, and then Christmas day would come and go with nothing to mention from it. After that, the rest of the Valley would soon wake up, and she would have a quiet tea party with Moominmamma again.

“Mrs Fillyjonk?” Misabel asked, folding and unfolding one of her many black dresses, acting as though it were very difficult to fit it into the case.

“Mm?” Mrs Fillyjonk said.

“Do you feel as though there is a storm coming?”

Mrs Fillyjonk always felt like there were a storm coming.

“The paper didn’t say so,” she said.

“Ah.”

“But best you leave today. Sure to be snow, soon.”

Misabel looked away from her, expression disappointed.

“Yes.”

“It really is for the best, I think,” she continued, trying to convince herself. “You are not my maid, it would be very strange and improper for you to continue living here, under the circumstances.”

“I suppose so…”

“Don’t just agree!” Mrs Fillyjonk snapped. “If you have something to say, say it.”

“Oh, there’s simply no point,” Misabel moaned. “Anything I say would sound terribly silly and you would not agree at all.”

“Don’t assume such things,” she said. “What is it you want to say?”

“It hardly matters…”

“Rubbish! I’ve never heard such rubbish. Whatever you have to say matters a great deal!”

To Mrs Fillyjonk’s great surprise, Misabel _scowled. _Not a frown or a sob or simply a helpless, bovine stare, but a real, angry scowl.

“It doesn’t matter, not when I must leave today!” she snapped, louder than Mrs Fillyjonk has ever heard her.

“Well hurry and get away, so I don’t have to hear such nonsense anymore!” Mrs Fillyjonk snarled, leaping to her feet. Before Misabel could reply, she turned and stormed up the stairs, making as much noise on each step as she could.

****

Mrs Fillyjonk spent a long while lying in her bed in the dark. It was nothing something she did often. As a younger woman, when she and Mr Fillyjonk had an argument, she would do much the same. She always said that a lady simply needed to calm down sometimes, but she always rather hoped Mr Fillyjonk would follow her up here, with tea and apologies and whatever else she needed.

He never did, of course. Eventually, Mrs Fillyjonk would get tired and shuffle back downstairs and start attending to the dinner or the housework or whatever else needed to be done, and Mr Fillyjonk would stay in his chair with his newspaper. Nothing would be said and nothing would be fixed.

It was the way of things, after all.

She supposed it was about that time. Misabel would likely still be packing. She would shuffle downstairs and start making dinner, and perhaps Misabel wouldn’t leave. Although she probably would.

Not even bothering to put on her slippers, Mrs Fillyjonk got out of bed and headed down the stairs. The house was very dark and quiet – as it had been for a long time, she supposed. Even with the Christmas decorations wound around every bannister and hanging from ever light, it still felt as though she were living in a shipwreck, far beneath the sea.

The lights were all off in the living room.

“Misabel?” she called, flicking the lights back on.

The cover had been torn off one of the sofas. Misabel’s case was gone too.

Outside, snow was beginning to fall.

The china kitten sat on the coffee table, ear glued back into place. It was not a good job – the glue was bubbly around its ear, and there were streaks of it across the coffee table and (somehow) up the curtains. The kitten now had a blob of ink on its nose, and the ear was lop-sided on its head. The saccharine expression had been transformed into something impish and daring.

Mrs Fillyjonk sat on the bare sofa with the china kitten in her lap, both of her paws clutched around it. The snow outside was beginning to blanket Moominvalley.

Misabel had left and it brought no relief. Just like when her son left, and then her daughter, and finally her husband, it brought now dramatic revelations, but rather a colder and emptier home. And just like those times, Mrs Fillyjonk could only sit and think about how there was nothing to be done and hope one day she would at least come back to visit.

Outside, the wind was beginning to howl. It was a storm – a real one, not the ones in her head. The windowpanes rattled, and snow blustered against the doors and windows.

It was a cold and dangerous day to walk alone.

What a stupid woman Misabel was, wandering off like that!

What a stupid woman _she_ was, telling her to do so!

“Oh, to hell with it!” Mrs Fillyjonk said suddenly, and stood, kitten still clutched between her paws. She found her raincoat and pulled it on over her pyjamas, pulling the hood up over her hair. She paused at the shoe rack. Her outdoor shoes were a sensible pair of Mary Janes for when she went down to the village for shopping, and a pair of kitten heels for special occasions. She was much too sensible a lady to go out in dangerous weather, so hadn’t ever needed snow boots.

Oh, she didn’t have time for this! Misabel was slow and walked with a shuffle, but Mrs Fillyjonk wasn’t much faster. The longer she waited, the more difficult it would become.

She shoved on the biggest, plushest slippers she had, in the hopes they would protect against the cold just a little bit.

It was beginning to get dark as she stepped outside the front door. There were heavy footprints in her perfect lawn. The snow was beginning to fill them.

“Misabel!” she called out into the growing snowstorm. She couldn’t see her. She walked down to the garden gates.

“Misabel! Get back here _right now_!” 

Nothing – she couldn’t even hear her usual complaining and sobbing. There was nothing for it. She had to follow those footprints, before the snow covered them.

Throwing open the garden gate, she charged out, holding her nightgown up with one paw and clutching the little china kitten with the other. She shouted Misabel’s name, but the wind was beginning to howl so furiously she couldn’t imagine she’d ever hear it. It was a terrible storm – exactly the kind she’d always imagined and feared and strangely longed for.

The sun was beginning to set over the Lonely Mountains.

“Misabel!” she shouted.

The hood was whipped from her head, and the snow was soaking through her slippers and her dress. In the distance, she could hear a faint singing, but Mrs Fillyjonk had no interest in _that_. She was not in the mood to deal with some silly young lady who wandered about looking for romantic idiots to kill. If the Lady of the Cold decided to try and take _her_ for some sort of romantic idiot, Mrs Fillyjonk would give her a good thrashing.

Finally she spotted it – a dark lump amid the snow, unmoving.

“Misabel!” she barked again, rushing as fast through the growing snowfall as she could. The lump shifted a little as she approached, but only barely, and Mrs Fillyjonk felt as though she could be sick.

Misabel was lying flat on her stomach, her case stood neatly beside her. She was wearing the couch cover as a make-shift raincoat, although it had done her precious little good.

Mrs Fillyjonk seized her and rolled her onto her back. Her eyes fluttered open weakly, squinting with confusion.

“Madame?” she said weakly.

Not in the mood for sentimentality, Mrs Fillyjonk merely barked:

“Get up, you oaf! What are you doing, lying in the snow!”

Misabel sat up, rubbing her head.

“Ah, well…I just felt so sad to be leaving that all I could do was lie down,” she said, as though it were obvious. Mrs Fillyjonk threw her arms around Misabel’s shoulders.

“Oh, my beautiful, wonderful disaster,” she said. “You should have asked to stay! Silly creature!”

“Madame, with all due respect, you didn’t ask me to stay either…”

Mrs Fillyjonk huffed, because she had an excellent point.

“Really now! Have you always been so cheeky!”

“Most people don’t keep me around long enough to find that out.”

Itseemed terribly unfair that Misabel had went misunderstood for so long.

“Well!” she said. “I should like to. And it is a ridiculous venture, travelling in this storm anyway.”

“Yes…you’re soaked. You’ll probably die of cold before we get back.”

Mrs Fillyjonk snorted and stood up straight. Misabel kept her paw tightly in her own.

“Then we should hurry! A pair of frostbitten corpses would be a horrible thing for the moomin family to find when they wake up,” she said, tugging her back towards the house. Her dress was soaked through and cold, and her feet were numb. The wind stung her cheeks and made her eyes, already reddened, water more.

Eventually, the three stories of her home took shape through the snow and darkness. Mrs Fillyjonk tugged on Misabel’s paw, dragging them both the final few steps.

The front door to her home had been left open. The snow and wind had blustered in, blowing china plates off the wall and coating the coffee table in snow and frost. It took both of them to push the door closed again, kicking aside the building snow and fighting against the wind.

Mrs Fillyjonk stared at her lovely, orderly living room. The place she’d worked so hard to make symmetrical and impressive and organised, in just a gust of winter wind had been transformed into an utter wreck.

“Oh, how horrible,” Misabel said, picking up a few pieces of broken china from the floor.

“We must barricade the door,” Mrs Fillyjonk said, not because she was sure it was the right thing to do, but because saying it made her feel manful and in control of the situation, and that was something she desperately wanted to be in that moment. Misabel nodded very seriously, and they started pushing the sofas towards the front door, stacking them on top of each other.

As soon as they had managed it, the windows were blown open with a great crash of glass. Misabel caught Mrs Fillyjonk by the arm before she blew off as well. The china cabinet in the corner came down with a great crash. The chandelier, a family antique, rattled free and whirled around the room, smashing against every wall before finally crashing into the floor. A floorboard above broke off, and Mrs Fillyjonk head the thunder of her bed being tipped over outside.

“Madame! Over here!”

Mrs Fillyjonk twisted to see Misabel pushing open the door to the basement, gesturing down at the stone stairs. Of course – the basement, as much of a mess as it was, was cold, reliable stone, with no windows at all.

“You clever woman!” Mrs Fillyjonk cried, struggling to keep herself from being blown away. She grabbed her skirts in her free paw and followed Misabel down the stairs, slamming and locking the door shut.

In the basement was everything Mrs Fillyjonk couldn’t find a place for. Mr Fillyjonk’s old tools, old blankets and shelves, books that had been read long ago, the old wood-burning stove, her children’s childhood toys and textbooks and a million other things nobody remembered properly anymore. There was an old kerosene lamp at the foot of the stairs, with just enough oil to last them an hour.

The lamp lit, Misabel set to work reducing the shelves to scraps of wood (she only needed to try to use them normally, after all), and Mrs Fillyjonk nailed planks of wood over the door and stacked boxes of toys in front of it. They built a fire in the hearth, old wood and the untouched pages of books.

Trying to warm herself by the fire, Mrs Fillyjonk spotted another problem.

“Our clothes are wet! Soaked through!” she cried. “We’ll catch our death, even if the storm doesn’t get us.”

Misabel was already digging into a set of cardboard boxes in the corner, kicking up dust.

“There’s clothes in here, Madame,” she said, lifting up an emerald-coloured coat with a white fur trim. Mrs Fillyjonk had bought it some years ago on a spurt of daring, but then decided it was much too garish for a woman of her age.

“…I suppose it will do. Pass me that pile and find something for yourself,” she said.

They stared at each other for an awkward moment and then, both greatly embarrassed, turned their backs to each other to change. Mrs Fillyjonk knew it was absurd – she was a grandmother, not some silly little schoolgirl – but she found her face turning pink as she heard Misabel shuffle out of her clothes all the same.

Misabel had changed into an old knitted jumper, bright red and down to her ankles, and a pair of slippers shaped like rabbits. Both had been presents from her daughter.

“It suits you nicely,” she said. “Now give me the wet things and I will hang them up.”

There was nothing to sit on, so they piled up old clothes around them and dragged a moth-eaten quilt from a corner. They managed to make the hot chocolate over the wood-burning stove, holding the single mug between them. In the flickering light of the fire, the little china kitten’s impishness resolved into a sort of mischievous satisfaction, as though a tricky plan had finally come together.

Despite the storm raging above their heads, in the dark and the warmth, it felt as though it were a hundred miles away.

“I don’t think the house will do well in this weather,” Misabel said mournfully, passing the hot chocolate to Mrs Fillyjonk. Mrs Fillyjonk stirred the candy cane through it, Misabel’s cheek warm against her arm.

“No,” she said, taking a sip, “I think not.”

“What will you do?”

“What will you?”

“Whatever you do, Madame.”

“Harrumph! A ridiculous answer. What if I were to do something completely stupid, hm?” Mrs Fillyjonk replied, passing the mug back. “My children always did as I said and did, and it made them dislike me terribly. I’d rather the same not happen to you.”

“Then…I would rather like to have Pimple back. Even though he has probably forgotten about me completely and I’m a rubbish dog-owner, I would like him back. What about you?

She thought about it. It was rather obvious, really, she had simply not wanted to look at it before.

“I would like to see my children. Even though I am a rubbish mother and they may well slam the door in my face, I would like to try again.”

“Then I suppose the question is which we do first?”

Mrs Fillyjonk was surprised into laughter, spilling hot chocolate down her paws.

“I suppose so,” she said. “My daughter’s husband may well be able to build us a new house, anyway. We will likely need it. I was tired of the old one anyway.”

“It’s a splendid idea, but I don’t have the money to fund such a venture, Madame…”Misabel said. Mrs Fillyjonk grinned in a way that was very much unlike her old self.

“Nor do I! But I suspect we can make enough of a nuisance of ourselves that he will be willing to do it for much less,” she said. Misabel chuckled.

“We should get Pimple first then. Pimple’s wonderful at being a nuisance.”

“Then it’s decided,” she replied, resting her cheek on top of Misabel’s head. “Shall we talk about all the ways we could die on the way?”

“I’d love to.”

****

It wasn’t like Moominmamma to wake up during her winter hibernation. She knew Moomintroll sometimes struggled to settle, but Mamma usually only opened her eyes when the first spring birds began to sing and the daffodils began to flower.

It came as a surprise then, that she found herself waking, on a surprisingly peaceful winter morning. She went to the window, for if one woke up during hibernation, usually something rather drastic had changed in the outside world.

The valley was as pale and quiet as she remembered it. Not even half past winter, there was not a single spot of spring colour to be found.

Looking across towards the river, what changed became obvious. Floating on top of the river was the perfectly straight and symmetrical shape of Mrs Fillyjonk’s house, bouncing against the shore. The top two floors, at the very least.

Mamma wasted no time. She bundled on a scarf and to Moomintroll’s room, to scramble down the ladder and out into the cold valley.

She worried about Mrs Fillyjonk a great deal. She wasn’t exactly a friend – they had far too different views on everything for that, and butted heads much too often. Yet she felt beneath her prickliness Mrs Fillyjonk was a rather lonely woman, and Moominmamma couldn’t see someone so sad and not want to help. Even if the only way to help was going by for tea now and then.

“Mrs Fillyjonk!” she cried, seeing the wreckage of the house. The bottom floor of her home had fared no better- most of it had been torn apart, with only a skeleton standing in its place. The thing that had been most preserved was the door to the basement, standing alone amidst the snow.

To Moominmamma’s immense surprise, the door began to rattle, and there was a sharp voice cursing behind it, and the sounds of some rapid bickering. After a few moments, the door swung open, and out emerged Mrs Fillyjonk, wearing a jolly green coat and with her hair in disarray. She turned, extending her paws, and out followed little Misabel, dressed in bright red, with a lump bobble hat squashed over her hair and a scarf around her neck.

“Mrs Fillyjonk? Misabel?”

“Oh! Moominmamma!” Mrs Fillyjonk replied, waving a paw above her head in greeting. “Awake early, are you?”

“Oh, I didn’t mean to! I just saw your house in the river and I was horribly worried. You are alright, aren’t you?”

“Perfectly well, Moominmamma, don’t fuss!” Mrs Fillyjonk shouted back with a laugh. “We’re off, you see. We have decided to go to Whompervale and then to Fillyjonk Hills for the holidays.”

“If we don’t get eaten by a bear on the way!” Misabel shouted cheerfully.

“Or die of frostbite!” Mrs Fillyjonk chimed in with a laugh.

The two women cackled in the wreck, as though this was the funniest thing either of them had heard in a long time. Moominmamma stood and watched them pick their way through the mess, offering a paw or shoulder to one another when it was needed. Old and odd as they were, Mamma decided it was clear they didn’t need her help at all.

So off they went towards the mountains, two bright dots against the snow, laughing and having far more fun than they'd ever had.

**Author's Note:**

> I think this is the most obscure thing on my Ao3.


End file.
